TGS 2007: LittleBigPlanet Hands-on

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Get the scoop on lip-synched VoIP, a public beta and more.

By Patrick Kolan

As TGS gets underway for wayfaring businessmen and women of the wider world, tonight Sony graciously held a pre-event hands-on with all the titles to be displayed on the show floor here in Tokyo - and IGN stayed up late to bring you the sweet, sweet candy. Although Killzone 2 was mysteriously absent, LittleBigPlanet was being shown in all its inoffensive glory. After being one of the few titles to demonstrate the processing and gameplay capabilities of the PS3, this year's Tokyo Game Show has already brought with it a couple of revelations ahead of Sony's press conference.

The first and most game-structure-significant is the Pod. This is the handle being applied to your personal space ship - basically a glorified starting menu screen from which you can access several different modes; Play - pre-designed maps, Friends - your friends list and their creations; Messages - a basic messaging service integrated with your friends list; Creations - the do-it-yourself design mode; and Me - your personal character customisation menu.

'Fluff' is the key to unlocking all sorts of new items and customisation options. Looking a lot like faintly glowing marshmallows, Fluff is scattered in strings of five or more, sometimes hidden behind hard-to-reach areas. Collecting Fluff becomes an essential gameplay mechanic from the get-go. Without some sort of unlocking process, how could new items be unlocked, after all? It's a bit of a worn concept, but by scattering Fluff in strange places around the level, it creates a compelling reason to experiment with the physics.

Racing! Woo! Just wait until the beta kicks off.

We also played a new level, 'The English Garden'. This was, according to Technical Director Alex Evans, assembled neatly inside of a couple of hours by one of the designers especially for the show. Whether or not it makes it into the final game (and we wager it will, since Evans also mentioned that they're aiming for "a whole bunch" of levels in the final release, The English Garden is a whole lot of fun.

Designed for two players, which is how we played, the level introduces cooperative skateboard racing - a case of both players standing on the starting grid in front of the skateboard deck - and then one player hopping onto it with X while the other player pulls the deck with R1 until it is over the starting hump. In a nut, any player can create a race in their course, creating conditions, jumps, hazards and whatever kinds of twisted opportunities for sick air they want, wrapping it up in a time limit that they think is fair. Then, this race can be competed on with your friends or anyone who downloads your course, competing for points and score-table glory.

The other big revelation is that LittleBigPlanet will feature VoIP and all the characters are actually lip-synched; when you talk, their adorable oversized gobs will babble away, which is always entertaining. This feature wasn't demonstrated, but will apparently feature in the press conference. Beyond this, although Evans was non-commital on a release date, he did mention that there were plans for a slow roll-out of a public beta this year starting, jokingly, with his mother and expanding bit by bit from there. Sign us up, please.

The customisation continues to expand with the introduction of Fluff and accessories.

Also newly revealed to us was the ability to, in addition to using your own photos as background textures, being able to place 2D objects in the fore-, middle- and background. We were shown all manner of simple accessories, as they've been dubbed, that add just a smidge more to the gameplay, but go a long way towards making your creation look distinct. Flags, posts, bolts of fabric, rolls of cusions, stickers, decals, metal grates and numerous other simple accessories were shown.

It was also revealed that the game's custom levels can be simply and automatically themed to suit your tastes. We saw two different themes, adjusting the basic background texture and object sets to suit - the Japanese Garden looked much as you'd imagine it - pagoda-style stonework, mossy paths, cloudy sky and so on. The Pier theme was all about worn wood plank floors, rusty bolts and old stonework. We're guessing there are another six or so themes built in at least.

On the subject of downloadable content, the team at Media Molecule have already got big plans for all sorts of items, themes and more. They wouldn't go into specifics as yet, but this is clearly the sort of game that would greatly benefit from as much fresh content as possible, as often as feasible.

Apart from all of this, the game is looking and playing as well as it did at E3. We're confident that this is going to be one of the key releases of early 2008, when we expect it to finally ship. Stay tuned for more coverage from the Tokyo Game Show floor in the coming hours and days.